"Pretty Middle of the Road in Every Respect Except Price"

Cambridge Park is a pretty typical California neighborhood. It has a main drag right off the freeway and a pretty middle of the road residential neighborhood that stretches just to the north of it.

Let’s start with the main drag. Monument Blvd. is one of the main East-West arteries that takes you deep into Concord—its four lanes are always packed with cars, especially at rush hour. Generally speaking you could say of it that the nicest part of Monument Blvd. is here. As you get farther east, the neighborhood gets a lot more rundown looking. It is the kind of street that is unpleasant to walk on because of all the traffic.

There are lots of stores and restaurants on Monument, though they are mostly of the fast food variety: McDonalds, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Subway. Stores here tend to be of the more practical variety rather than boutiques: Rite-Aid, gas stations, an automobile tinting place (Discovery Tint). That is not to say that there aren’t any restaurants here. You have a couple Chinese food places and that sort of thing. It is not really the kind of place you would drive out to even from the surrounding areas. In other words, if I lived in Pleasant Hill, there is not a single restaurant here that I would drive out to, like I would for some places in Walnut Creek or Pleasant Hill.

In fact, the main reason that people end up on Monument is for things like getting smog tests, auto glass or construction supplies. It is that kind of a commercial area.

You can definitely find places to rent here. On the western end of Monument you will find some of those fairly ugly boxy apartments that seem to be fairly ubiquitous since the 1970’s. A 3-bedroom in one of these will run you $1300—which is about as affordable as it gets.

This is a fairly typical Ranch home residential area, with relatively leafy streets and grassy lawns—the sort of place where you feel relatively sheltered on the inner streets and where the interior neighborhood traffic is slow enough where you feel okay letting your kids ride their bikes on the streets. (As safe as anybody feels these days anyway.)

There is an amazing amount of turnover in this neighborhood, with homes being sold right and left, which suggests to me that Cambridge Park was really slammed by the mortgage crisis. The median home price here is around $250 K, with sales ranging from around $100 K to around $650 K (though only 10% of homes break the $500 K mark). There are some homes that have recently sold for below $100 K, but I assume these are auctions due to the Mortgage Crisis.

Close to 80% of the homes in Cambridge are currently on sale due to foreclosure.

This is actually a pretty working class neighborhood where the average household income is around $40,000/year, below the average even for Concord. Schools here are about the same as well--very middle of the road.